Tag Archives: Instagram

Many small businesses have tried Facebook ads that did not produce results. Others are using them to drive significant business results. What is different?

Facebook generates $4B. in ad revenue and over 1 million small businesses use Facebook ads. When I speak with people about online marketing, I often highlight the opportunities to use Facebook (and now Instagram) for cost-effective advertising. I also highlight that you can no longer rely on organic reach to get to existing followers of your business.

Several people have recently told me they tried Facebook ads and they “didn’t work.” So they stopped. That usually means that they did not see an immediate, short-term uptick in sales.

Advertising can generate awareness and it can induce someone to look more closely at your product or service. It may not produce an immediate sale. It depends on your product/service and where the reader is in the buying cycle.

In Facebook, People Are Not Actively Looking to Buy Things

[Tweet theme=”basic-full”]In Facebook, people are not actively looking to buy things.[/Tweet]

In Facebook, they are likely not actively looking to buy something right now. Google ads based on certain keywords may be aligned with immediate purchase intent, but Facebook ads have another complementary role to play.

Facebook advertising is usually a longer-term investment. It helps you to generate demand with people who weren’t already looking for you. It helps you to build an audience to market to over time.

There are exceptions. Some products or services may be impulse purchases that can show immediate sales results. Certainly Facebook and other social media networks are hoping that is the case as they all continue to invest in social commerce capabilities. But most of the value of your Facebook ads is to generate awareness and to build an audience to sell multiple things over time.

Common Reasons Your Facebook Ads Didn't Work

There are some common reasons why your Facebook ads didn’t produce the desired results or “didn’t work.” I have compiled my top ten things to look at and adjust in your approach:

Wrong Objectives. People on Facebook are primarily looking to connect with friends and family and to be exposed to interesting content. They are not primarily there to find and buy products. If you have a relatively inexpensive product that someone can make a fast purchase decision about, then maybe you will see product sales directly from ads. I get a lot of ads for T-shirts in my News Feed and I might click to purchase one that I found particularly interesting. People may have an interest in your products, but are not currently ready to make a purchase. Or your target audience may need additional information before they are ready to make a purchase from you. Facebook is primarily a place for you to create awareness and induce people to do something to start a relationship with your business to learn more. Ask people to sign up for something rather than make an immediate purchase.

Incorrect targeting. The power of Facebook advertising is in targeting your audience. First you have to define the personas of the buyers of your product or service. Then look at the Facebook targeting options to match those personas. You don’t want to target too broadly. You want your ad to display to the person who will have the most interest in your products and services. If you only rely on targeting by location or by interests, you may have wasted your ad dollars. Use Facebook Ad Manager or Power Editor to get the most targeting options, including location, age, gender, interests, connections, relationships, language, education, and workplace. You may also be able to make use of custom audiences to target people from your email list or lookalike audiences based on people who liked your page or visited your website.

Uninteresting Image. Facebook is a visual platform. If your image does not stop the user’s eye and grab attention, they will scroll right past your ad. Generally, images with people grab the most attention. Or your image needs to stand out in some other way. It might be brightly colored. Or it might be funny. Sometimes the images that I think are good turn out to be duds and ones I think are marginal turn out to be stars. You have to try multiple images and test to see which ones work the best.

Dull headline or unclear value/benefits. Headlines with emotion get the most attention and response. Words like “easy” or “free” or “simple” or numbers or brackets in the headline generate more clicks. Clearly stating the value or benefits you provide also will drive clicks. If the reader is unclear what the the value or benefit is to them, they simply scroll to the next thing. The value proposition needs to be aligned specifically to the target audience for the ad.

Going after quantity versus quality. Going after the most ad impressions or the most page likes or most website clicks is simple and enticing. But it may not be capturing the people who are most likely to engage with your business and eventually make a purchase. Set your objectives and targeting to go after the people who are most likely to be interested and engaged. Big numbers of uninterested or marginally interested people won’t lead to results.

Not capturing and nurturing prospects in email. Someone may read your ad and have some interest, but they are not ready to make an immediate purchase. But they are a valuable prospect for you to capture and nurture until they are ready to buy. The most effective way to do that is to capture their email address. By opting-in they are giving your permission to do personalized, 1-1 marketing to them over time. What a tremendous value. You may need to offer them a bribe to sign up and give their email. Offer something of value – some information or a contest – that creates an incentive for them to spend a minute filling out a web form.

Relying only on Boosted Posts. Since Facebook now only shows your posts to 2-6% of your page followers, I think the Boosted Post has a role to play in getting key content posts to display to your followers (or your followers and their friends.) Beyond that use Facebook Ad Manager or Power Editor to create and target ads. The Boosted Post gives you more space for text and a link, but fewer options for targeting and bidding. It also won’t enable you to do A/B testing to find out what works well with your target audience.

Unclear Call to Action or No Landing Page. An “aha” moment came to me a couple of years ago when I learned that people only do what you tell them to do. I had previously assumed that people would take action on their own. It doesn’t happen. If you want someone to sign up for email or to follow you on social media or call you or take some other action, you have to ask them to do it. When you ask them to take action, they do, if you make it easy. Make sure you have a focused landing page that is simple and clear for them to take the desired action.

No Retargeting. Retargeting works by keeping track of people who visit your site and displaying your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites. Someone may have visited your web site, but was not ready to make a purchase. Retargeting keeps your business front and center to bring people back when they are ready to buy. Retargeting helps to increase conversions after they have visited your site.

Failure to constantly be testing. One well known web site had a call to action button that was colored green and blended into the overall color palette of the page. They found when they changed the color to red that their click-through rate skyrocketed. It leapt off the page, captured the eye, and more people took action. Test alternative images, headlines, and colors to find out what works best. Constantly monitor and re-test new ad variations to find what works best for your audience.

Social Media for business continues to evolve and mature. It’s now official. Instagram is bigger than Twitter! And with recent announcements there are exciting opportunities to exploit Instagram for business growth that exceed those of using Twitter. And they may even exceed Facebook marketing opportunities for the foreseeable future, depending on your business audience.

If you’re not using Instagram for marketing your business, it’s time to consider it seriously. 93% of marketers are using Facebook, but only 36% are using Instagram.

Instagram (owned by Facebook) recently announced that they have reached over 400 million monthly active users. 100 million of those have joined since December, so growth has recently accelerated. This number surpasses the number of active Twitter users.

As I have spoken with business people in my local area recently I have seen and heard very little interest or engagement in using Twitter. But those in the 20-45 year old range tell me they are spending more time on Instagram as are their friends. These informal conversations seem to support the trend in the data.

28% of the US population now uses Instagram. But Instagram is not just a U.S. phenomenon. 75% of its user base is outside of the U.S.

Instagram has also just announced that any business can now run ads on the platform by using the Facebook ad infrastructure available via Power Editor.

Why You May See Higher Marketing ROI from Instagram

There are several reasons why you may generate more return on your marketing investment with Instagram versus either Twitter or Facebook.

It’s big and growing fast. You can now reach more people than on Twitter and growth appears to be accelerating. While Twitter is large, its user growth has slowed considerably. And equally concerning is that less than half of Twitter users even check it daily.

It’s not overly crowded yet by marketers. Only 36% of marketers are using Instagram so far, so the chances of your message being seen and gaining user engagement is still much higher than on other platforms already crowded with marketers, e.g. Facebook. That will change over time as the platform gains popularity and more business features are added, but not for a while.

User engagement is higher. 3.1% of posts on Instagram have user engagement of likes, comments, and re-posting. This is way above Twitter and Facebook where post engagement is 0.7% or less. (Source: SocialBakers research)

Organic reach is not limited. It’s like the good old days of Facebook. Your business post is displayed to 100% of your followers. Contrast that with the 2-6% of followers that you can reach organically on Facebook now. This benefit probably won’t last as the platform grows and Facebook looks for more ways to monetize the audience. But for now you can build relationships with your followers easily and consistently without paid advertising or post boosts.

Younger people use it more than Facebook. According to data from a Cowen & Company study, 44% of 18-29 year olds use Instagram while only 23% of them use Facebook regularly. It’s about the same usage for those in the 30-44 year old age range with 27-28% using each platform. Instagram usage is significantly lower for people over 45 years old as compared to Facebook usage. If a key audience for your business is younger people making purchases, you may see greater bottom line results from Instagram marketing than from Facebook. As it gains in popularity I also expect to see usage increase across all age ranges the way that it did for Facebook.

You have access to all the Facebook user data. Because Instagram is owned by Facebook, you not only have access to user data from Instagram, but also from the same users on Facebook. A whopping 94% of Instagram users also have Facebook. So the wealth of user data that Facebook has aggregated on each of us is also available for Instagram advertising.

You can run very targeted ads with specific calls to action. The Facebook ad infrastructure is being shared with Instagram. So for paid advertising to extend your business reach you can do the same specific targeting based on interests and behaviors in addition to demographics. In using Facebook’s Power Editor, you also have options for specific objectives and calls to action. An Instagram ad can create brand awareness, but it can also be clickable to your website (unlike a normal post). You can also set objectives for a mobile app install or a video view. Website conversion tracking will be coming soon.

Will This Last?

The Instagram marketing opportunities are exciting right now. As the platform grows I expect they will become less compelling over the next few years. Facebook will need to monetize the audience the same way they have done on the core Facebook platform.

More and more marketers and users may clutter up the Instagram feeds to where they will need to implement something like the Facebook News Feed algorithm to prioritize posts.

As Facebook moves toward more visual content the distinction between Instagram and Facebook may diminish. Facebook is already sharing the ad infrastructure between the two platforms. There may be other technology synergies and integration in the future. Will they continue to have value as two separate platforms or will they converge over time?

As more older adults move on to Instagram, it may no longer be a cool place to be. A new wave of young people may choose yet another social media network to increase interaction away from their parents.

So the time is now to exploit opportunities to grow your business with Instagram marketing. There is still a lot to test and learn about what is most effective to drive business results. There are differences. For example, you can’t post from a desktop to Instagram. You must be on a mobile device. And it’s about beautiful, eye-catching images. See my other blog post on Top Five Instagram Marketing Best Practices for some key elements to keep in mind.

I heard from a business person last week telling me she has done social media marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest and listed her products on a very large eCommerce site, but has seen no results. She said, “I’ve tried lots of things, but nothing is working.”

You may be like her or you may be in the group of people who used to do very well on Facebook, but not anymore. You were posting updates and interacting with your audience. New people were becoming aware of your business. People were sending you messages and coming by to buy products or services. But not any more. You are struggling to reach the people who liked your page. Your sales directly attributable to Facebook have declined. You’re not alone.

In my experience there are some simple reasons why your social media marketing is failing in today’s environment. Here are the most common, along with some things you can do about them:

Failing to segment the market and target your specific audiences. You may be doing what I call “spray and pray marketing.” You throw stuff out at everybody and hope that something sticks. You are spending time, effort, and money with low or non-existent results. Success in marketing, especially social media marketing, is to segment the market and create content to meet the needs and desires of each. Social media is “new,” but timeless principals of marketing are not.

Not creating buyer personas. Personas of your typical buyers in each market segment should drive the social media platforms, content, tone, images, ads, and value propositions to communicate with them. It is also the basis for very targeted advertising on social media to augment your organic reach.

Spreading across too many platforms or the wrong platform. In the evolution of social media we are seeing some maturation and segmentation. If you are only using Facebook or Twitter, you may be missing the platform where your target audience spends its most time and engagement. If you are only using Instagram, you may be missing audiences who only use Facebook or LinkedIn. But trying to be everywhere can also backfire. Your content and formats either won’t be optimized or you will spend an excessive amount of time posting natively to each platform.

Focusing on selling something immediately from social media. Marketing is about meeting customers needs profitably over time. I am incredibly annoyed when someone asks me to connect on LinkedIn and then immediately sends me a sales pitch. They know nothing about me or my business. I have expressed no interest in their product or service. They have ruined a potential future business relationship with me by jumping into sales mode. If you have sales people and they are doing this, stop them! They are hurting your business, not helping it.

Driving people to a landing page or web site that is not mobile friendly. As I have blogged before, mobile is where it’s at now. If people go to a page or site they can’t easily read on their mobile device, you have lost them as a potential customer.

Not promoting discovery of your content. You are not using the right hashtags on platforms where they should be used. Or you are using irrelevant hashtags. Or you are not doing keyword research for your personas and creating content that highlights those keywords. Or you are not reaching out to others and engaging on social media so that they may also come and look at your content.

Relying on organic reach. I’ve blogged about this previously. Facebook is now pay to play for businesses. Other social media platforms are moving that direction as they plan and experiment with ways to monetize their users. You must at a minimum pay Facebook to occasionally boost key content to your followers. And you should be considering highly targeted ad campaigns based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. You still have tremendous opportunity for your content to show up between photos of friends and family, but you will have to pay for that privilege to go beyond 2-6% of your followers.

Not being social. The mantra at Social Media Marketing World this year was, “Don’t be on social media. Be social!” Engage with your followers. Ask them questions. Thank them for following you. Reply promptly to comments or questions from them. Use a variety of posts. Remember that people are on social media to stay connected, be entertained, and be informed. They are not there for a hard sales pitch.

Not being visual enough. The posts with the highest engagement are photos and videos. I’m still amazed at how many tweets I see on Twitter without an attached photo. Your content is much more likely to be attention grabbing if you have an image or video. Great images are keys to success on both Instagram and Pinterest.

Driving traffic to a web site without an email opt-in or to a landing page that is not optimized. Despite the hype around social media, the data show that email marketing is still the most effective way to deliver personalized marketing to people over time. They are giving you permission to get to know you better even if they are not ready to purchase from you right now. They are more likely to look at your email after opting in than they are to see your social media posts.

Ignoring data analysis, testing, and adjustment. Digital marketing is unique in being able to give you a wealth of data about what is working, what is not, and whether it is cost effective. It is also fairly easy to do A/B testing. Conversion pixels are making it better to track exactly what converts and what doesn’t. Watch the data. Stop what doesn’t work and do more of what does. There is also research data available online to guide you in areas such as highest converting content, highest converting landing pages, social media post types with the most engagement, best times to post on different platforms to maximize engagement, etc. Your mileage may vary, but this data points to useful starting points so you don’t waste a lot of time and effort. And if you have a personal Pinterest account, convert it to a business account so you get data analytics.

Social media expertise is not the same as marketing expertise. Good marketing is still good marketing. But social media gives us new, cost effective ways to target audiences to drive our marketing objectives. Social media gives us some new tools and communication methods. Social media platforms will continue to evolve and change as more commercial, business features are added.

Have you identified any other reasons why your social media marketing hasn’t worked? Are any of these the reason your social media marketing is failing to produce the desired results?

Instagram is a social media platform that continues to grow in importance to marketers. Especially if your target audience includes 18-40 year olds on mobile devices, this is a place you want to be. But to be effective and generate a return on your marketing investment, there are some Instagram marketing best practices to follow.

Why Instagram?

If you haven’t looked recently at the statistics for Instagram, it’s time to look again. According to recent studies from Pew Research and Iconosquare:

300 million people use it and 75 million are active each day

70 million photos are added each day

more adults use Instagram than Twitter

53% of 18-29 year olds are on it

70% of users have looked for a brand on Instagram

37% of users follow 1-5 brands and 32% follow more than 5 brands

only 28% of marketers are on Instagram

I have to confess I got more focused on Instagram opportunities after two clients in their thirties shared with me how they are active on it, as are their friends. That caused me to re-evaluate my own marketing priorities.

And it’s not only big brands reaping rewards. Many small businesses are also seeing value. Food trucks, restaurants, entertainers, artists, architects, coffee shops, clothing shops, jewelry shops, and many others are building a loyal audience on Instagram who help them to spread their marketing stories and messages.

Best Practices to Follow

As social media platforms continue to evolve and mature, there are a distinct set of best practices to follow on Instagram:

Set up a unique profile – Name is the only thing searchable, so use yours or your business. Make it engaging in 150 characters. What is your very succinct value proposition? Include a link. This is the only place you can include a hyperlink back to your web page or your landing page for an opt-in. Make it so people want to follow you, not just to like one of your random photos. Include something personal or humorous in the bio if possible. Consider using emoticons to make your profile more attention-grabbing and interesting.

Use high quality images and videos – Instagram is about visual content. A picture is worth a thousand words – literally! Use a photo to tell a story about your company, your products, or your services. But constantly posting photos of your products over and over again without telling a story won’t cut it. You’re not there to sell. You’re there to nurture a customer relationship. Post photos that people can relate to and that they care about. Consider showing a behind the scenes view of your business.

Use lots of hashtags – Unlike Pinterest, Instagram engagement is higher with lots of hashtags. One study claimed that posts with 11 hashtags get the most engagement. You may not need 11, but use quite a few so people can find your content and engage with you. It’s also a good idea to create a brand-specific hashtag or to create one for major campaigns and contests. Hashtags help you to get discovered. Look for trending hashtags that you may create relevant content for. Make sure you use relevant hashtags. Don’t be accused of #hashtagabuse by just latching on to a high volume one. Including your location can also help to boost discovery.

Post consistently and be interactive – Ask questions. Reply to comments. Like and share content from your followers.

Run a photo contest or offer special incentives – One way to boost engagement and reach is also to run a photo contest related to your brand. Use a unique hashtag and offer some prizes. Consider other ways you can reward your followers on Instagram with special discounts and promotions or by highlighting and sharing their content.

Note that you can link other social media platforms to your Instagram account, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and foursquare. You can easily cross-post from Instagram to those platforms. Note that Facebook owns Instagram, so expect to see more business and advertising features added over time. Also, it appears that Facebook may currently favor and give higher weighting in the News Feed to content shared from Instagram.

Hope you find these Instagram marketing best practices helpful. Is your business marketing on Instagram? Anything else you would add or tell others to avoid?